He was still holding the imaginary door open with his right hand. As
he finished speaking, he stepped forward a step, turned, pulled the
imaginary door shut a few inches, transferred it to take the inside
knob in his left hand, and then stepping carefully forward, he thrust
the imaginary door closed, his hand clenched around the imaginary knob.
The act ended as his hand entered the real doorknob and there was the
high-pitch whine of metal against metal like cutting a tin can with a
bandsaw.
The intruder turned, walked across the office, and stood there in front
of Martin Hammer. From a pocket he look a cigarette and a match and lit
up, blowing a cloud of fragrant smoke into the air.
"I am delighted to meet you," he said.
At which point, Martin Hammer blew up.
He had been patient. He had been astounded. He had been sitting there
with his chin getting lower and lower and lower as this ... this
character walked through his door with all the assurance in the world.
Then the bird had the affrontery to behave as though he had not invaded
Hammer's office; had not ruined a fine oak door; and as though Hammer
should have been glad to see him.
What added fuel to Hammer's explosion was the fact that the intruder
seemed absolutely unaware of the ruination of the door.
"What the--" yelled Hammer. He leaped to his feet, ran around his desk,
and faced the intruder angrily for only an instant.
Hammer launched himself at the intruder with intent to do bodily harm,
mayhem, and perhaps a little bit of second-degree murder that might be
juried into justifiable homicide.
He did not connect. The stranger disappeared at that instant, and
Hammer's well directed blow fell upon thin air. Hammer, finding no
resistance before him, fell flat on his face, which mashed the cigar
into his mouth and burned a hole in his fine Persian carpet. He turned
over and sat up, spitting out bits of tobacco mixed with equal parts of
very bad language. Blankly he ran his hand through the spot where the
stranger had been.
"Now," he said in puzzlement, "what in the name of--"
"May I apologize?" came a voice at the door. Hammer whirled and saw the
intruder again, standing there with a rather dumfounded expression on
his face.
Hammer grunted. At least he is now cognizant of his ruin-production,
he thought. This was true. The intruder no longer had that fatuous
expression that ignored the damage.
"Apologize?" exploded Hammer.
The intruder stepped through the ruined door. "I got the focus wrong,"
he said, "otherwise the image could have--"
"Image?" yelled Hammer.
The stranger nodded. "Image," he said. "Look, Hammer, you don't really
think that I actually walked through that door, across your office
floor, and then disappeared into thin air, do you?"
"Well ... and who are you?"
"My name is Tim Woodart. I'm an engineer."
"Look," said Hammer shakily, "I'd like to know what's been going on. As
a producer of motion pictures, I am beginning to see the glimmerings of
a fine idea. I sort of resent the destruction you've created, but it
certainly carried off its point."
"I'll bring in the gear, too," said Woodart. "If you don't mind."
Hammer nodded. Whatever it was, Martin Hammer had just had his door
broken in by the first of all true three-dimensional photography!
* * * * *
Harry Foster stood on a lonely stage and smiled at some mythical point
in the mid distance. Dramatically he pointed, and as he pointed, across
his face there came a change over his features. Normally handsome,
Harry Foster's "bad" face was thrice as bad for the distortion into
hatred. It was excellent acting.
The man beside the camera nodded. It was not only excellent acting but
it was rather emotionally troublesome to be confronted by a living,
breathing image of yourself. You, watching you do something that you
had done previously.
Harry Foster's hand stole up alongside of the cutoff button and he
thrust it down viciously.
The scene stopped instantly and disappeared.
Foster, remaining beside the camera, swore. He rereeled manually a few
yards and restarted the camera. He caught a previous scene's ending: a
beautiful woman smiling shyly at another man. The scene's ending was
brief, to a flash-over of Harry Foster standing in the center of the
stage, and going through the same motions of smiling offstage, with the
features changing from smile to scowl of hate.
Again Foster's hand flipped the switch and the image of Foster
disappeared as did the settings on the stage.
Foster swore again. "There must be some way--How does he do this
anyway?"
Foster opened the cabinet-like side of the solid camera and looked at
the circuits. They were enigma to Foster, but there was some logic to
it--there must be. You create an image and then wipe it away to make
place for the next image--just as in common cinema. But in normal
cinema it is possible to halt the film and project a still. That's what
Harry Foster wanted--
He pulled a single tube from one circuit and snapped the camera on. The
stage was blank. He replaced the tube and tried another tube removed
by some distance from the first. He started the camera, and the stage
flashed into being once and then went blank again. There was a tiny
flash from the bottom panel of the machine and Foster looked down to
see the indicator of a blown fuse.
Foster nodded. Obvious. To stop the wipe-away would mean that the next
frame would be placed on top of the first. A double exposure would
not work in the solids. Not without repealing that law of nature that
states that two things cannot occupy the same space at the same time.
What he had to do was to stop the projector at the same time he stopped
the wipe-away. Tim Woodart had fixed the machine so that the wipe-away
completed the scene after stopping the works. Just a matter of safety.
Foster puzzled over the machine and restarted it again. He waited until
the image of Harry Foster stared off stage and then he grabbed two
tubes and jerked them out simultaneously.
The projector stopped; the scene remained. The image of Harry Foster
stood there dumbly. Then it turned vaguely and looked at the camera and
the man beside it.
"Hello, hero," sneered Foster.
The image blinked. "I've wondered what might happen," said the spurious
Foster.
"Yes," chuckled the real Foster, "we have, haven't we?"
"I--," started the image, but he stopped and looked wildly around.
"What do you want?"
"You know."
"I'll not do it! You ... we ... ah ... well, it's no go."
The real Harry Foster sat down in the director's chair. "I've had more
time to plan," he said. "You're just an image--"